Bell's News

New pilot breweries to continue Bell's innovation and experimentation

For 13 years, nearly every bottle of our beer was packaged in one room. Now, we’re turning it into our new pilot brewery to help us continue our focus on innovation.

Work continues this Spring on our new 12.8 barrel pilot brewing system in our Comstock Brewery.

This new, additional brewery will allow us to continue to innovate and experiment with new recipes on a smaller scale.

"This space will give us flexibility and an amazing venue to create and learn,” said Andy Farrell, Brewing Innovation Manager. “We expect to create new and interesting beers while maintaining the high quality standards that Bell's is known for.”

The Comstock Pilot Brewery is located in our original bottling hall, where every bottle of our beer was packaged between 2003-2016. With tanks made in Michigan, Wisconsin and Germany, the new system is similar to our other brewing systems, to help make it easier to scale up to our 50 and 200 bbl systems.

“We will also be using the space for brewing research, and optimization opportunities,” Farrell said. “We are excited to see what interesting beers come out of the pilot brewery, and look forward to sharing them with our fans."

The brewery will have its own mill room and fermentation cellar, which includes wood foeders for sour and wild beers. There will also be a specialty bottling line with the capability to fill 12 oz and 750 ml bottles.

The six person innovation brewing staff is made up of veterans at Bell’s, and includes a sour beer specialist and a barrel specialist.

This project is part of of $7 million of total investments being made in Comstock and Kalamazoo this year. A smaller 3 bbl pilot system is also being installed at our original Downtown Kalamazoo brewery next to the Eccentric Café.